…And all through the house, not a creature was stirring - not even a mouse.
0205 25 DEC 2008
Merry Christmas, all, and greetings from San Francisco. We don’t have any mice on board to be a’stirring on this quiet holiday evening. Just myself and the few personnel unlucky enough to pull watch today. Christmas Eve and Christmas day really aren’t all that special when you are on a ship. Every day is just like the last. The only thing that really makes holidays stand out is that people grouse a little more when they can’t be home. Nothing else.
My night has been a little more than mundane though. It started normally enough - I watched a movie, did my laundry, and bullshitted with the crew. These are all regular every day activities, especially the bullshitting. The main thing that makes a crew tight and daily life at sea bearable is the camaraderie between shipmates. Good friends make for good times no matter where you go or what horrible job you’re working on. I know I will have sea friends as close as family over the years. Nonetheless, I am more and more convinced that the maritime world stay afloat solely on the crap that comes out of sailors’ mouths. We bullshit *that* much.
After wrapping up all the above-mentioned items, I retired to my stateroom for some light reading before bed. I slept in this morning and when 2200 rolled around, wasn’t tired yet. I would have read for a little while and then called it a night, except for this noise. Directly about me, was an intermittent tap-tap-tapping noise. It was light, but definitely noticeable. And it just kept going. It tried to ignore it, but after a while, I couldn’t. I started thinking of the layout of the ship, wondering what could be so irritating and directly above me. The next deck up is first-class Petty Officer berthing. I wasn’t sure who was onboard this evening, but I was pretty confident no one was spending their night randomly pinging the bulkheads. No, right overhead is an outdoor walkway. At this point, I needed to know.
I went up and out and sure enough, found the source of the noise. Mooring line #3 was tight and rubbing against its chock. Normally, the ship just sits quietly next to the dock, secured by the mooring lines, but not pulling on them. This evening, the wind had picked up and was blowing the ship away from the pier. Two hundred and twenty five feet of broadside was tugging rather insistently on lines #1 and #3.
The mooring lines for a vessel this size are large enough in diameter to be called hawser - greater than five inches in circumference. They are thick pieces of rope and very strong. We run mooring lines from four places on the ship to secure it to a pier, numbered in order from the bow - one from the bow running forward, one from the bow running aft, one from 3/4 down running forward, and one from the stern running aft. All of these lines are doubled up, two hawsers running from the same chock to the same cleat on the pier. The weather has to become rather inclement for eight lines of that size to be insufficient, but that was what I was looking at. The hawsers are made of synthetic materials, which do stretch a bit. That is one of the dangerous qualities of synthetic line - it stretches until it snaps. To prevent this from happening, short lengths of thin cotton line (which does not stretch) are attached to thick hawsers. The hawsers stretch, pulling the thin lines tight. If the thin line breaks, that warns you the thick line is becoming strained. For this reason, the thin lines are called tattletales. Neither of the tattletales on the #3 hawsers were as lax as they should be.
I didn’t think this would be much of an issue. It was probably totally fine. But it was going to bother me if I didn’t mention it to someone. Every person on a ship is responsible for its safety. Even the lowest person needs to say something because they may see things those higher up haven’t noticed. So I went inside and asked the two guys on watch what’s the point that we become concerned about the lines. They scoffed and said they’re fine unless the wind is blowing more than 30 knots and it’s only about 5 out right now. I said a’ight, but didn’t drop it. It had felt a lot gustier than 5 knots outside. Just out of curiosity, I went up to read the anemometer on the bridge. It measured a sustained 26 knots, with gusts up to 35. I stayed for a minute, just to make sure I hadn’t caught it at an exceptional moment and headed back to my boys in the galley.
“I’m just going to sound obnoxious saying this, but it’s 30 knots outside right now. Both the readouts on the bridge say so. Have you guys been outside lately?”
Turns out they hadn’t. Neither had gone out for a smoke break in a couple hours and in that time, the weather rolled in. They looked at #3 and one of them went below to wake the officer on duty. BM1 came up, checked out #3 and #1, bounced on the lines, and decided to reinforce. He had been laying in his rack, feeling the ship move, thinking about checking the lines. I had just beaten him to it.
So we set about laying some new lines. I haven’t been trained in line handling past the basics we got at boot camp, but I jumped right in. We pulled up another hawser from the Bos’n Hole. BM1 threw it over to the pier, we wrapped it onto the bits, tightened it with a capstan, repeated the whole deal with the other end (just because two lines are better than one), camelbacked the extra line, and called the bow good. Then we repeated the whole routine at the stern. I was pulling stuff and faking lines and handling line like I was meant to be there. And it felt good. No one told me to stay out of the way or felt like my untrained butt was a liability. We all just threw in to get it done. And the whole time, the bullshitting went on.
I think tonight I impressed those guys - or at least made a good impression. I may not be trained and qualified yet, but I showed them that I am competent. I was observant enough to notice an issue, intelligent enough to recognize it for what it was, and confident enough in what little I do know to put myself out there and say something. I have come onboard at the end of a string of disliked females. Between being unwilling, incapable, and insane, the last three girls assigned to this buoy deck left the guys with a bad feeling about what ladies can do here. I intend to change that. I will work hard. I will work smart. I will do everything I can to be the best Seaman they have ever seen. It is very doubtful that next Christmas I will still be a Seaman. I don’t know if my path will lead toward becoming an Ensign or a BM3, but either way I know I won’t be here. So, Merry Christmas from San Francisco! This is likely the only time I will ever be able to say that. May you all be safe, wherever you are, on this wintry Christmas Eve.
Merry Christmas, all, and greetings from San Francisco. We don’t have any mice on board to be a’stirring on this quiet holiday evening. Just myself and the few personnel unlucky enough to pull watch today. Christmas Eve and Christmas day really aren’t all that special when you are on a ship. Every day is just like the last. The only thing that really makes holidays stand out is that people grouse a little more when they can’t be home. Nothing else.
My night has been a little more than mundane though. It started normally enough - I watched a movie, did my laundry, and bullshitted with the crew. These are all regular every day activities, especially the bullshitting. The main thing that makes a crew tight and daily life at sea bearable is the camaraderie between shipmates. Good friends make for good times no matter where you go or what horrible job you’re working on. I know I will have sea friends as close as family over the years. Nonetheless, I am more and more convinced that the maritime world stay afloat solely on the crap that comes out of sailors’ mouths. We bullshit *that* much.
After wrapping up all the above-mentioned items, I retired to my stateroom for some light reading before bed. I slept in this morning and when 2200 rolled around, wasn’t tired yet. I would have read for a little while and then called it a night, except for this noise. Directly about me, was an intermittent tap-tap-tapping noise. It was light, but definitely noticeable. And it just kept going. It tried to ignore it, but after a while, I couldn’t. I started thinking of the layout of the ship, wondering what could be so irritating and directly above me. The next deck up is first-class Petty Officer berthing. I wasn’t sure who was onboard this evening, but I was pretty confident no one was spending their night randomly pinging the bulkheads. No, right overhead is an outdoor walkway. At this point, I needed to know.
I went up and out and sure enough, found the source of the noise. Mooring line #3 was tight and rubbing against its chock. Normally, the ship just sits quietly next to the dock, secured by the mooring lines, but not pulling on them. This evening, the wind had picked up and was blowing the ship away from the pier. Two hundred and twenty five feet of broadside was tugging rather insistently on lines #1 and #3.
The mooring lines for a vessel this size are large enough in diameter to be called hawser - greater than five inches in circumference. They are thick pieces of rope and very strong. We run mooring lines from four places on the ship to secure it to a pier, numbered in order from the bow - one from the bow running forward, one from the bow running aft, one from 3/4 down running forward, and one from the stern running aft. All of these lines are doubled up, two hawsers running from the same chock to the same cleat on the pier. The weather has to become rather inclement for eight lines of that size to be insufficient, but that was what I was looking at. The hawsers are made of synthetic materials, which do stretch a bit. That is one of the dangerous qualities of synthetic line - it stretches until it snaps. To prevent this from happening, short lengths of thin cotton line (which does not stretch) are attached to thick hawsers. The hawsers stretch, pulling the thin lines tight. If the thin line breaks, that warns you the thick line is becoming strained. For this reason, the thin lines are called tattletales. Neither of the tattletales on the #3 hawsers were as lax as they should be.
I didn’t think this would be much of an issue. It was probably totally fine. But it was going to bother me if I didn’t mention it to someone. Every person on a ship is responsible for its safety. Even the lowest person needs to say something because they may see things those higher up haven’t noticed. So I went inside and asked the two guys on watch what’s the point that we become concerned about the lines. They scoffed and said they’re fine unless the wind is blowing more than 30 knots and it’s only about 5 out right now. I said a’ight, but didn’t drop it. It had felt a lot gustier than 5 knots outside. Just out of curiosity, I went up to read the anemometer on the bridge. It measured a sustained 26 knots, with gusts up to 35. I stayed for a minute, just to make sure I hadn’t caught it at an exceptional moment and headed back to my boys in the galley.
“I’m just going to sound obnoxious saying this, but it’s 30 knots outside right now. Both the readouts on the bridge say so. Have you guys been outside lately?”
Turns out they hadn’t. Neither had gone out for a smoke break in a couple hours and in that time, the weather rolled in. They looked at #3 and one of them went below to wake the officer on duty. BM1 came up, checked out #3 and #1, bounced on the lines, and decided to reinforce. He had been laying in his rack, feeling the ship move, thinking about checking the lines. I had just beaten him to it.
So we set about laying some new lines. I haven’t been trained in line handling past the basics we got at boot camp, but I jumped right in. We pulled up another hawser from the Bos’n Hole. BM1 threw it over to the pier, we wrapped it onto the bits, tightened it with a capstan, repeated the whole deal with the other end (just because two lines are better than one), camelbacked the extra line, and called the bow good. Then we repeated the whole routine at the stern. I was pulling stuff and faking lines and handling line like I was meant to be there. And it felt good. No one told me to stay out of the way or felt like my untrained butt was a liability. We all just threw in to get it done. And the whole time, the bullshitting went on.
I think tonight I impressed those guys - or at least made a good impression. I may not be trained and qualified yet, but I showed them that I am competent. I was observant enough to notice an issue, intelligent enough to recognize it for what it was, and confident enough in what little I do know to put myself out there and say something. I have come onboard at the end of a string of disliked females. Between being unwilling, incapable, and insane, the last three girls assigned to this buoy deck left the guys with a bad feeling about what ladies can do here. I intend to change that. I will work hard. I will work smart. I will do everything I can to be the best Seaman they have ever seen. It is very doubtful that next Christmas I will still be a Seaman. I don’t know if my path will lead toward becoming an Ensign or a BM3, but either way I know I won’t be here. So, Merry Christmas from San Francisco! This is likely the only time I will ever be able to say that. May you all be safe, wherever you are, on this wintry Christmas Eve.